Introduction: Passing Toys Down to the Next Generation.

I grew up in a family that every man in our family was a pipeliner. For this reason we played with tonka toys inside and outside. I did not follow in the footsteps of the generations before me. To keep the oil and gas in our family though I now design and 3D model pipelines and oil refineries. Just a little background on how this project came to be. While visiting my dad this past year he told me that he had some of our old remote control toys in storage and was ready to part with them. What I found were toys that I loved and cherished as a child. I have two sons one the age of 4 and the other 18 months. My 4 year old loves his heavy equipment and can tell you the name of almost every major piece of machinery he comes across. When he saw my old RC toys he instantly wanted them. They no longer worked so I needed a way to use these so that my sons could enjoy them even if they were unable to play with them. *Light bulb - Gru * I would transform one of the RC toys into a nightlight for my boys!

Step 1: Deconstruction!

The toy that I disassembled was not an old school metal tonka toy. I would never disassemble one of those, because well they are metal and last forever *barring being ran over :(. You will need a plastic toy for this to work. Preferably one that has thin plastic and clear windows. I do not have pictures of disassembling my RC excavator. It was literally 8 screws and a couple clips and I had it disassembled. You will need to pull the electronic out of your toy if you start with a RC toy if starting with just a toy even better.

Step 2: Reconstruction!

Now while you have the toy apart you need to add your LED strip lights. I used LED lights because of their life span and you can get some that run fairly cool. I bought my LEDs strips off ebay. The kiddos night light runs 24/7 and has not burned out. It has been running for approximately 6 months. Please use caution when housing LEDs in confined spaces they have the potential to heat the environment they are in and could cause the toy to melt or catch fire. I monitored the night light for a few days before I placed it in the kiddos room.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/RGB-5M-3528-LED-Strip-Ligh...

Those are not the exact ones I bought. These are better you can change the light color!

Put the toy back together and plug it in. Not much to it really. Let me know if you have questions.

Make it Glow!

Participated in the
Make it Glow!